Room 1135 at NBC
by Crackers and Cheese
Summary: The Late Night War of 2010 if it had taken place in a world where all late night hosts were in institutions.


Wingtip shoes graced the floor of the dimly lit empty hall, their squeaking the only sound echoing for miles around. The man wearing the shoes walked with purpose, his green eyes, protected by clear glasses, staring straight ahead unwaveringly. The edges of his white coat almost dipped into a puddle of an unknown liquid that was quickly spreading across the floor. He didn't pause for a second, knowing that the cleaning staff will get to the mess eventually.

That was one of the downsides to working in a mental institution. You couldn't know what you going to step on on any given day. He's stepped in juice, blood, urine, and worse during the twenty-four years he's worked at the institution. Ahead, an overhead light crackled and blew out just as anguished screams echoed from the floors above. The man rounded the corner to a more brightly lit hallway, and the screams abruptly cut off. _Thank god for orderlies_, the man thought as he walked out to the lobby of the building.

The lobby was vastly different from the hallways branching out from it. For one, it was far from plain. Various paintings were hung along the walls and the hanging lights cast a small spotlight on the six seats that created a small half circle around a small coffee table in a corner. The table was littered with various outdated magazines, since there hasn't been visitors at the hospital for a while. But there was one tonight, and he was pestering the receptionist over the front desk.

The receptionist, Natalie, was saying, "Please, mister, it's after visiting hours, may I ask you to leave—"

"I was personally asked here, by the Head Psychiatrist himself!," the visitor proclaimed. "If I don't see him in five minutes I have half a mind to—"

The visitor didn't finish his threat because the man decided to intervene. "Hello, sorry I'm late," the man smirked, satisfied that he got his visitor so riled up. In fact, the visitor whipped his head towards him so fast he probably got whiplash.

"Well that's less than five minutes," the visitor conceded, talking half to himself and half to Natalie before addressing his host. "Dr. Zucker."

"Dr. Richter." Dr. Zucker's smirk turned into a smile as he eyed his guest.

"Please, call me Andy," Dr. Richter said kindly.

Unfortunately, Dr. Zucker wasn't willing to return the favor. "Come with me, Andy," he said, adding the last bit as an afterthought. Andy shared a confused glance with Natalie before following Dr. Zucker back around the corner he came from, and back into the darkness.

* * *

Dr. Zucker walked in long strides down the hall, and Andy struggled to keep up, mostly because of his shorter legs and the fact that Dr. Zucker was in better shape than he was. Nevertheless, Andy tried to keep pace, and when his struggling caught Dr. Zucker's attention Zucker decided to shorten his stride.

"Why did you ask me to be here?" Andy asked, slightly out of breath. "After hours, no less?"

Zucker's focus on the hall ahead wavered as he gave Dr. Richter a sidelong glance. All of the sudden he looked worried. If this didn't work out he and all the other doctors will have start back from square one, and he didn't think they could with the time they had left. "There's a patient you've dealt with before that is about to be moved to a new room and I was hoping you would go through his file and see if he's ready for that transition."

Andy raised a blond eyebrow. "I haven't worked here for eight years," he said, chuckling in disbelief, "why do you need my advice now?" Dr. Zucker abruptly stopped, finally arriving at his destination. Andy bumped into him from behind, and when he peeked around Zucker's taller form and stared up at the door of Dr. Zucker's office.

Unfortunately the door was a bit worse for wear. The door was made up of mostly rotting wood, it has been in the same spot since the hospital opened in 1926. There was a small window high up on the door, more for letting light in than for seeing through it. The window was protected by several rusting black bars that formed a grille on both sides of the door, probably for when an unruly patient tried to break in or out they couldn't harm themselves by breaking the glass. Etched below the window, in peeling faded gold letters, was the title HEAD PSYCHIATRIST.

Dr. Zucker opened the door and Andy winced at the creaking the action created, taking a look around the once familiar office. It was one of the biggest offices in the whole building but it was still a bit small. A wooden desk took up the most space in the room, and despite the worn out corners and scratched out lines that covered it the desk was by far the nicest looking object in the room. The swivel chair behind it seemed pretty okay except that it was permanently stuck on being the shortest it could possibly be, a fact Dr. Zucker despised because of his tall stature. There was no computer to be seen because all of its duties was carried out by the filing cabinet that was gathering dust in the corner. The waste bin was full of tissues used by the relatives of patient that sat on the several worn out chairs that were in front of the desk. That and the overall dark and dusty atmosphere did not make the place feel like the sterile, technologically advanced doctor offices that were around these days.

Dr. Zucker avoided sitting at his chair, which made his back ache like hell afterwards, and went straight for the filing cabinet which housed all of their patient files, past and present. "This patient has been here a long time, and we don't want to set back his progress because we did something he wasn't ready for. We just need to cover all of the bases, that's all," he explained as he opened the third cabinet, which was labeled M-S.

"Who is the patient?" Andy inquired. It seemed if Dr. Zucker was going through this much trouble figuring out if this patient was ready for a simple transition that this patient must be important. And Dr. Richter only worked with a few patients before he left back in 2000, so at least that narrow it down a bit.

Zucker swiftly pulled out a file out of the bunch that crowded the cabinet and dropped it on the desk facing Andy. Andy leaned on desk to pick it up and get a better look at the file, wary of chairs that he swore he saw a few termites drill holes through. He took one glance at the label of the file, which read O'BRIEN, CONAN.

"He's still here?" Andy asked, surprised, as he quickly flipped through the file, skipping all the parts he's seen before and even written. "How is he doing?"

"He's improved dramatically since you left and was replaced by Dr. Max Weinberg," Dr. Zucker told him. "He's becoming lucid for more than a few minutes each week, I really think he's breaking from his delusions."

"That's nice," Andy said distractedly, preoccupied with reading a report in Dr. Weinberg's messy scrawl. "Which room are you considering moving him to?"

Dr. Zucker smiled, knowing the answer would be a surprising one. "Room 1135."

"What?" Andy exclaimed, dropping the file he was holding and letting the papers that were previously confined in it flutter to the ground.

Room 1135 had a turbulent history at North Berkeley County Psychiatric Hospital, or as everyone likes to shorten it to, NBC. Since the fifties, there were several people who for some reason suffered delusions that caused them to believe that they were late night television hosts. The first known case of the delusion happened to a patient called Steve Allen, who was admitted to the NBC in 1954. He was placed in Room 1135 until a patient named Jack Parr with a similar delusion was moved there in 1957. For some reason they both believed they hosted the same show, _The Tonight Show_, while they were housed in the room. The same thing happened to Johnny Carson, who was in Room 1135 from 1962 to 1992, the longest a patient ever was in the room.

In 1992, however, there were two patients that had the delusion, Jay Leno and David Letterman. Mr. Letterman lived in the room right above 1135, Room 1235 while Mr. Leno was a new admittee. It was a hard decision, but in the end the doctors decided that Jay was to be placed in the room. This caused Mr. Letterman's and Mr. Leno's budding relationship to be damaged forever because within the delusion, Room 1135 was a prestigious honour, even called the best show in late night, and Mr. Letterman believed that he was heir to the Room 1135 throne. Due to Mr. Leno's and Mr. Letterman's growing hostility to each other they transferred Mr. Letterman out to Columbia Beach State Hospital, or CBS. After Mr. Letterman's removal, Mr. O'Brien was admitted and was placed in Mr. Letterman's room, Room 1235, which was also a room where they put people who suffer under the delusion of being a late night host.

Andy didn't think the current arrangement would change anytime soon, but now it looks like he was wrong. But even though he left NBC eight years ago Andy has made sure he's heard the latest news involving his former employer and he wasn't completely sure that Conan or even Jay was ready for the transition. "You sure Jay's up for this?" Andy asked, getting on his knees and collecting the papers on the floor. Dr. Zucker answered by opening the second drawer of the filing cabinet and pulling out a file. He placed it on his desk and Andy stood up to look at it. It was labelled as LENO, JAY.

"This is all you need to know about Mr. Leno," Zucker said. As Andy quickly scanned the most recent weekly reports from the pile of papers that accumulated during Jay's 16-year stay at NBC Dr. Zucker continued. "All recent reports state that Mr. Leno is doing much better nowadays, and is lucid more often than not. We have decided that he is fit to be released from NBC."

"Released? As in he's cured?" Andy stopped flipping through Jay's file and looked up at Dr. Zucker with interest.

"As far as we know, yes," Zucker grinned as he shared the good news. "We're going to have routine check-ups on him after he's released, but we're sure he's cured."

Andy set Jay's file aside and eyed Conan's again and while he was preoccupied, Zucker decided to again ask Andy of his favour. "If you can just okay Mr. O'Brien's transfer then we'll part ways—"

"Actually, I want to observe Conan for a while," Andy interrupted, grabbing the two files and standing up. "To see if he's really to move. A detailed report sometimes doesn't tell all of the facts, you know?" Andy said causally.

Dr. Zucker looked mildly annoyed at the possibility of having yet another doctor walking down the busy halls of NBC. He was irritated enough to try to protest, but Andy interrupted him before he got started.

"Sorry I have to go, see you tomorrow," Andy said in a rush, in a hurry to get out of the room. As soon as he raced out and closed the rotting door he clutched the two files to his chest and ran like the wind down the hall, creating a storm of noise in the once silent hallway. He didn't really care how many patients' good night sleeps he disturbed, he was eager to catch up on his former patient.

* * *

Night had fallen when Andy opened the door to his apartment. It was pretty small, but it was nice enough for how much Andy paid for it. After he left NBC he went to work at Foxdale Mental Health Center, or FOX, in hopes of becoming Head Psychiatrist one day. It didn't work out, and now he's an assistant to a doctor he's sure that they doesn't know what they're doing. All in all, it's worse than his NBC job, and it pays less too. So Andy was relieved when he got a phone call from Dr. Zucker, it was a relief to hear from NBC again.

He hung up his coat in the closet right in front of his entryway. He carelessly threw the files onto the couch as he passed through his living room to his kitchen. He started up his coffee machine and started to prepare a sandwich, knowing he had a long night ahead of him. Armed with a steaming cup of coffee and a delicious sandwich he collected the files and walked across his small dining room to his second bedroom, which he turned into a in-home office.

He placed his files at the edge of the wooden desk, flipping the switch on his desk lamp, which created a pool of light on the center of the desk, which was covered by a desk calendar for the year 2008. In one sweep, he cleared his desk of all unnecessary clutter before putting Conan's file in the light. He then started to empty the file, reading all the reports contained inside, even the ones he's read before, so he can have a clear picture on Conan's current mental health.

Conan O'Brien was admitted to North Berkeley County Psychiatric Hospital in 1983 after having a breakdown in college. A friend of his came to check up on him because Conan was absent for a _Harvard Lampoon_ meeting, which he was always present for since he was president. The friend opened the door to Conan's dorm to find the room in a mess and Conan was in the center of it, in a near-catatonic state.

He refused to let anyone touch him without screaming and throwing his arms and legs like a pinwheel, effectively distancing himself from anyone who tried to reach him. The President of Harvard resorted to call his parents to ask that they help with getting Conan off the grounds. A tearful Ruth O'Brien immediately called one of the best mental institutions in America, NBC. It took five orderlies to drag the protesting soon-to-be mental patient off the Harvard premises, and Conan has been at NBC ever since.

The first few years at NBC were hard for Conan. At first Conan was catatonic most of the time, he was unresponsive to most of the tests the doctors tried. They concluded that he was probably this way because he was in an unfamiliar environment, but the doctors struggled to find a way to make Conan feel more comfortable. Andy was a doctor for another patient at the time, and he happened to overhear Conan's doctors' troubles during the lunch breaks they all shared. Andy decided to check the Conan guy out in his free time.

Andy skipped out on his lunch to go over to Room 1235, the room where Conan was staying in. It turned out that Conan really liked him, and he made Andy the first person at NBC he included in his delusion, which then was in its early stages. Ever since that breakthrough, Conan became more delusional and Andy was made his head doctor. Over the next few years Conan's mental state stabilized and Andy began to think about moving on. Conan seemed to be getting better but it seemed to Andy that he didn't have to be there for that to happen. So, in the year 2000, he filed his resignation papers and left.

Judging from the reports filed after his resignation, Andy's departure devastated Conan mentally, so much so that he began going in a downward spiral which Conan perceived as himself rising to be a late night star. What was actually happening was that Conan was getting completely absorbed in his delusions, and they had triple his original medicine dosage to get him back to earth. Overall, he wasn't the best candidate for a room transfer, especially for Room 1135.

Room 1135 was one of the more luxurious rooms, it was the second biggest and the least padded room in NBC. It was for patients who were near the end of the road of recovery but who needed a little boost to the finish line. For Room 1135 patients the NBC doctors create a special cocktail of drugs that instead of stabilizing their mental state worked to cure their disease and to help the patients achieve complete lucidity. As they do this the drugs cause the patients to have a sense of immense euphoria, which causes them to believe that hosting _The Tonight Show_ made them the happiest they have ever been.

Andy closed Conan O'Brien's file with a sigh and checked his wall clock for the time. Seeing it was nearing one o'clock in the morning Andy decided to put off reading Leno's file until later. He had to walk up early to see Conan at NBC tomorrow, and he's definitely not going to be sleep deprived. He quickly prepared himself for bed and walked to his bedroom, which was right next to his home office. As Andy pulled his bed covers over his head he reflected that it would be nice to see Conan after being years apart, even though he was beginning to be concerned about the circumstances that allowed for him to return to NBC.

This transfer of patients—Conan to Room 1135, Jay being released, and the new patient that was going to be moved to Room 1235 after Conan's departure—will be one of the most historic transitions at NBC ever since the Leno-Letterman fiasco. Andy had a feeling that both Conan and Jay weren't at all ready for the change, but what did he know? He hasn't even worked at NBC for almost a decade.

What Andy didn't know was that he was right—and the resulting disaster of the patient transfer will change the lives of everyone who was involved forever.


End file.
